From the New York Times, Dec. 10, 1998
(see bold sections)
Impeachment Proving Divisive for the Republicans
By ALISON MITCHELL
WASHINGTON -- When Representative Henry J. Hyde proclaimed in September that the impeachment of a President could not succeed unless it was bipartisan, Republicans hoped the scandal over President Clinton's relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky would fracture the Democratic Party.
But now as the impeachment inquiry into President Clinton moves steadily toward a climactic House vote next week, the issue instead is driving a wedge into the Republican Party. Fearing defections,
Hyde, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Wednesday asked Republicans to "withhold judgment" until his committee finishes its work.
The Republican split is not huge. Most of the 228 Republicans in the 105th Congress are expected to support impeachment, while only a few dozen have come out against the impeachment of Clinton or are considered undecided.
But the division is significant because these Republicans hold the key not only to President Clinton's fate but to their party's survival as a Congressional majority. Some of them fear that an impeachment vote could imperil them, leaving them with local enemies among Democrats
and independents if they vote yes and Republicans if they vote no.
"It will prevent the Republican Party from holding marginal districts and picking up new districts," said Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican who has become one of his party's most vocal opponents of impeachment. "It will relegate us to minority party
status."
Hoping to encourage more Republicans like King, the White House Wednesday featured as one of its defenders the former Republican Governor of Massachusetts, William F. Weld, who was head of the criminal division of the Justice Department under Ronald Reagan.
The last time Weld took center stage in Washington was when Clinton tried to reach across party lines in 1997 and name him as ambassador to Mexico. Weld saw his nomination torpedoed by Senator Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican whom he accused of "ideological extortion" and of blocking him because he was fighting for an inclusive Republican Party.
Wednesday Weld, though measured in tone, broke just as dramatically with the majority of House Republicans by proposing a tough censure option in lieu of impeachment. It would require a written Congressional report on the President's behavior; a written acknowledgment of wrongdoing by the President, a fine paid by Clinton, and no attempt to forestall Clinton's possible prosecution on perjury after he leaves office.
"Nobody's going to forget this stuff," Weld warned of impeachment, reminding Republicans that voters had chosen Clinton even after learning of Gennifer Flowers's accusations that the two had had an extramartial affair. "This is a man who's been elected President of the United States twice and thus entitled to this office."
There were also signs of a roiling struggle inside the sizable Republican delegation from New York.
After announcing that he favored a "strong statement of rebuke," Representative Amo Houghton, an upstate Republican said he planned to reach out to an array of party elders, including former Senators Howard H. Baker Jr. and Bob Dole, former House minority leader Robert H. Michel, and Speaker Newt Gingrich, for help to propel censure forward in place of impeachment.
And while aides to Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato denied that the New York Republican was doing any lobbying a day after he said impeachment would be a "grave mistake," another epublican close to D'Amato had recently been making the same point to some fellow New Yorkers in the House.
Representative Charles E. Schumer, the Brooklyn Democrat who defeated D'Amato in November said today he hoped D'Amato's remarks would lead other Republicans to support censure. "I think that Senator D'Amato came out and said what he thought all along," Schumer said.
Hyde himself became so concerned that he sent a letter to fellow House Republicans asking them to hold off declaring themselves until his committee completed work on articles of impeachment. He said in the letter that he was available for phone calls. He told reporters he wanted to contact fellow Republicans and "urge them to keep their powder dry."
But a senior Republican aide outside the committee said, "New York is not bleeding" and that he expected a number of the uncommitted Republicans from New York to come out for impeachment, perhaps in the next several days. So far, Houghton, King and Representative Jack Quinn have come out against impeachment.
The impeachment struggle has become just the latest test of whether Congress's largely Southern Republican leadership and its fervent conservatives can co-exist easily with its Northeastern moderates. Representaitve Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican opposed to impeachment, said he did not expect to be ostracized for his position.
"There's a lot of respect going on among members," he said. "We mostly intuitively know this is not an easy thing. There's almost a sense of camaraderie among Republicans because we do not agree."
But Representative Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican who has been one of Clinton's most ferocious critics sounded only half joking when he said this afternoon, "It's the civil war all over again."
Of the Northeasterners, Barr said, "If their constituents are telling them it's O.K. for the President to perjure himself and we want you to stand for that, so be it."
Most Republicans, like Barr, come from solidly Republican districts. But the impeachment vote is particularly agonizing for Republicans -- many from the Northeast -- from swing districts.
Some proponents of impeachment argue that those Republicans will not suffer from a vote to impeach the President because the Senate will never convict the President, thus nullifying the vote. But Democrats, who picked up five House seats in the last elections, have been pouring over lists of Republicans who come from districts that voted for Clinton in 1996.
They hope to help round up votes for Clinton by sending Democratic House members out to argue privately to these Republicans that they will be opposing the will of their constituents and their vote could haunt them in two years.
King, who wants a censure alternative to come to a vote in the House, warned that his party would slip back into the minority if its leadership does not accommodate the needs of Republicans from swing or Democratic leaning districts.
"I think the party leadership is still showing itself as the gang that can't shoot straight," he said. "If anyone genuinely suports impeachment then they have the absolute moral right and obligation to go forward. But anyone who thinks this is going to help Republicans politically is absolutely crazy. This is going to divide the Republican Party. It's going to re-energize the Democratic Party. And it's going to drive away independents." |
